Where Everybody Knows Your Name - Ep. 059
Have you noticed your clients with language impairments really struggle to recall names? This can be a real communication barrier, both socially and in literacy development.
Stories are the fabric of our existence and they make up a large part of our conversation. When our clients are telling stories, not only do they default to vague and non-specific language frequently, they can't even recall a person's name to include in their story!
This episode, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, is full of suggestions for teaching name recall.
As a bonus, in the Free Resource Library you can download THREE stories with the same main character. You get simple stories and name recall practice all in one package!
--- Useful Links ---
Phonological Awareness Tracking Form
Tracking Phonological Awareness
Developmental Sequence of Phonemic Awareness
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Transcript
Denise: Hello, and welcome to Episode 59 of The Speech Umbrella podcast. Today's podcast is titled Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Have you noticed your clients with language impairments really struggle with recalling names? I sure have. And this can be a real communication barrier. Here's a story that illustrates why.
I was working with a young man who was in junior high. And he told me a funny story about something that happened in his science class of school. But the problem was I couldn't really follow his story because of his vague language. And so I said, I think that's probably a pretty funny story, but I really couldn't follow it, so let's figure out where the problem was. And I suggested that he use more specific language. And since it was about his science teacher, I said, well, what's her name? You could include her name in the story. And then I would know who you were referring to. And he said, um, um, um, and then he ducked his head and he was really, really surprised and flustered that he couldn't recall his science teacher's name, and it was several months into the school year. So it wasn't like he had just been introduced to her.
Our conversations are filled with stories and experiences, just like this story this young man was trying to tell me. Stories are the fabric of our existence, and so they make up a large part of our conversation. When our clients are telling stories, not only do they default to vague and non-specific language, frequently they can't even recall a person's name to include in their story.
So then the listeners are driven to making all kinds of guesses and assumptions. That's not a great scenario for communication. A lot of people will pretend they know what someone is talking about rather than asking lots of questions to clarify. Besides everybody likes it when you know their name, there's a lot of positive social credential that comes with using people's names.
So today I'm going to talk about some ways to specifically build a better name recall. Here's the ground we're going to cover in this episode. Why is name recall so hard? What are some ways to work on name recall? And finally, I'll talk about some materials I have on The Speech Umbrella website that can help with name recall.
Okay, let's dive in. Why is name recall so difficult? Now this is pure speculation on my part, but these are some of the reasons that I've come up with. Some clients are so used to imprecise language and they already have word recall issues, but they've kind of figured out how to skirt around word recall issues because you can substitute this other word or use a really non-specific word, but that doesn't work when it comes to a person's name. You really can't say that name wrong, so they just avoid it. And then I think that avoidance becomes a habit of just not using people's names very much.
Here's another reason, well I'm not sure if it's a cause or if it's an effect, but with my pretty young clients who are pretty language impaired, they're still trying to put sentences together and they will often speak in sentence fragments. And often the noun phrase is the part of the sentence that gets left out and that contains the person's name, and they'll remember the verb phrase but they just can't get the two together. And so they're not really used to using names because they're used to defaulting to the verb fragment.
And then there's early listening and phonological awareness skills, which I talk about all the freaking time, but this is something I've noticed when I get clients to a certain point in their phonological awareness, they start to remember names more easily. So I think the inability to remember sounds in sequence really affects the ability to remember names, especially more difficult names.
And finally, sometimes the cognitive load is just too high. There's so many other things they're trying to remember. They're trying to figure out how to use this language, how to describe, how to tell a story, and it's just too much of a cognitive load to remember the name.
So what can we do about name recall? Here's some things that I've been doing lately. I lower the cognitive load. And one way I do this is by using a series of stories that feature the same character. Now they're different stories, but they have the same character for several weeks in a row. So they get used to using the name and they don't have to think about it too much because they're familiar with this character and they can use their cognitive processing on the other parts of the story. And then after I've used the same character for a while, I'll switch to a different set of stories that have a different character. And then eventually I'll start switching back and forth between different characters and see if they can still recall the names.
This really simple technique of using a series of stories with the same character for a while has worked wonders. It has worked so well. My clients can finally smoothly go on to telling stories without having to put so much effort into recalling names. And of course I know it's working because now they can switch back and forth between different characters from week to week and not get confused. They can actually remember the names and use them in the stories.
Here's some other ways I incorporate working on name recall with stories. We will play the story out using props, and I will also use a really basic rubric. It's a post-it note rubric. You guys know how much I love post-it notes if you've listened to some of my podcasts in the past, but what I'll say is every sentence has to tell me who and what, and we will take turns telling the story. And I usually go first as a model and I write who and what on the paper. Now you could draw little pictures if they can't read who and what, and they have to make tally marks when I remember to name the character or use the pronoun for the character. And when I tell about what, which is the verb phrase, and if I miss one, they're like, oh, wait a minute.
You didn't say that I can't give you a tally mark and so then I have to go back and repair because sometimes I'll make mistakes on purpose so that they can hear what it's like when it's not correct. And then it's their turn to tell the story and I'm making the tally marks. And they can see that I didn't make a tally mark under who, and they're like, oh, wait a minute.
And then they might have a little bit of a struggle, but they will often recall the name on their own without me having to give them a prompt, because they're seeing that rubric. So far, I've been describing things I do with fairly young clients, but with older clients, I just use more sophisticated rubrics. Generally they can handle a higher cognitive load so they can think about more things than just saying the person's name.
I also use recording a whole lot with older clients. They can really benefit from listening to a recording of themselves and marking how they did on their own rubric and then figuring out how to fix it. And then we do it again and then they listen again and they can see that they improved. Another thing I like to do with older clients is have them practice telling story jokes, by that I mean the story jokes that are a whole lot longer than knock-knock jokes, identifying the characters becomes really important when telling those kinds of jokes in order to communicate the punchline. And so they're pretty motivated to learn how to tell a joke and they like to go and tell it to their peers or to the family and tell it smoothly, and in such a way that people laugh.
And last, but definitely not least, let's talk about phonological awareness. I'm going to review quickly what is on the first two sections of my phonological awareness tracking chart, and the reason I'm doing this as I've noticed a really interesting concurrent increase in name recall along with an increase in phonological awareness.
In the first section I have listening games and those games are centered around identifying sounds, remembering sounds in sequence, and following directions. The second section is centered around rhyming, identifying rhyming, anticipating rhyming, and generating a variety of rhymes. What I have noticed and what is so fascinating to me is that when clients make progress in rhyming, they start to recall names more easily and they know how to pronounce them. Sometimes I can't even remember the sequence of sounds in a name in order to pronounce it. And that really stymies them.
If you're interested in learning more about phonological awareness, I have several podcasts on it and I'll link them below. And also you can get my phonological awareness tracking chart on The Speech Umbrella store.
I do want to put in one caution here that if you're working with fairly young clients, you need to make sure they are ready to tell stories before you dive into this. I have a whole podcast on that called Follow the Narrative Road, and it describes how to get clients to the point where you're confident that they are ready to begin telling stories, and I would do that first before I focused on this name recall issue.
Okay, by now, you might be thinking those stories with the same character. That sounds great. How do I get my hands on some of those? In my free resource library, I have three stories about a character named Tony. And my last podcast To Infinity and Beyond, that's the one where I talked about infinitive verbs, I mentioned a story I have about a character named Tony and how he wanted to have fish for dinner. That's your infinitive verb, to eat or to have.
Anyway, I'm offering two more stories about Tony. So you'll have a total of three available in my free resource library and so you can try this out and see if it helps your clients to have stories with a consistent character. Now, if you're interested in more of these stories, let me know because I can get them more professionally drawn and offer them on The Speech Umbrella store website.
I have about thirty stories, ten for each of three main characters. I have Tony who I've already talked about. I have Peter Pig who has adventures on the farm, and I have Wanda Witch who has her own set of adventures, many of them centered around Halloween. I cannot even begin to tell you how helpful these stories have been and in so many more ways than just name recall.
But those other ways, well, that's for another podcast. For right now, we're going to hang it up and thanks for listening. Remember when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself.
